in exile, in hope
by Hiranya
Summary: Our three travelers find their way back to each other, again, maybe for the better, maybe because they can't imagine being any other way.
1. seaward dreams

He walked, head angled slightly against the lightly blowing rain, eyes lowered and dark. He'd been walking—perhaps running, more aptly—for a while now, sandals scraping against the dirt of the road that led down towards the shore, some ways away from the center of town. The salt hung thick in the air, and he could feel it on his skin. He shrugged, trying to loosen his muscles, glancing around and everywhere with the half-trained eyes of someone extraordinarily skilled. He sensed no threat, no looming specter of police or half-annoyed soldier come to try their luck. It was better this way, though he missed—dearly missed—the clatter of blades and the dank smell of old blood sometimes. The rushing, heady sensation that he was alive, full in his flesh and bones and skin. He wondered, every now and again, when he caught a half-glimpse and thought it was them—but it never was, their roads had separated days and months, maybe years, ago, surely they could not already be running back into each other?—whether something was really very wrong with him. That he could only feel his life burn in his veins when he cut through others like they were paper talismans, burning in the kitchen fire, carrying prayers towards an unhearing deity. And then somehow, the fight—the dark specter of his hunger—would find him, and he'd cut, and burn, and throw all his doubts into the deep, to be left for another day, another night, and another bottle.

He remembered two things, very vividly, and they seared his closed eyes whenever he swayed and ducked and half-danced his way through his bloodlust and his battle—the black crows come to pull at his prone body, and the white sky beneath him and blue ocean above. Maybe he fought to see them again, to feel the half-lingering presence of death standing watch over him. He had clawed his way away once, been called back once—though he'd never let her know that, in his unspoken embarrassment—and now he could never forget them. Maybe he was a ghost, and maybe he would never die. Either theory seemed worth testing.

But, those two. He looked up, at the gently rolling waves, the boat with its metal-tipped prow anchored at the dock, and exhaled. He still had some shore time left, before they would send someone to drag him back (or he absconded, as was usually his wont), and here he was, back at the sea instead. Memory played across his eyes, and the flicker of their forms lingered in his gaze as he stared dully towards the darkening horizon. He wondered what happened to them, whether they were safe, whether they were happy. It was a strange feeling, one he wasn't quite used to, and didn't know what to do about. How do you send good wishes to someone—silently, through the air and water, through the land itself? How do you let them know, that in their happiness, in the fact that they live, you find your peace? It was confusing, it demanded action, and what action he could do—right now, running away from the annoyances of authority like he always did—was limited. He scowled, and cursed aloud, startling the fishermen who'd just pulled in for the day. They glanced quizzically at him, as they yelled out to the women waiting on shore with their baskets and started to unload their shining catches. He didn't bother to look. They would be afraid, and he would not care. So the world went.

He couldn't remember mourning many people—he had lived where they died, and figured life itself was gift enough. He drank, and he dreamt—sometimes of them, sometimes of the crows, sometimes of the two blurring together in a hazy wash. He woke, and he lived, and he felt their presence linger just beneath his consciousness-leaking through to his waking mind when he caught a glimpse of a flying squirrel in the autumnal trees, when he broke down the door of an abandoned dojo and slept on the floor, smelling the years and years of toil pressed into its rotting wood. And he missed them, and he wished they were happy, and too often for his liking, he wished he could find them. Could make sure that they were there in the world, just so that his own presence, as ghostly and wandering as it seemed to be, would be anchored to this life. He didn't want the crows to claim him.

Not yet, anyways.

He pushed a hand into his pocket, pulled out some silver and copper coins—and one large gold coin—counting out in a low tone. Some of this was his own—what he'd grabbed out of the week's loot onboard, at any rate—some of it was stolen, most of it was spent. He still wasn't quick with the figures, but this would be enough to sustain him for a day or two. He glanced back at the boat, idly wondering if he should make his soon-to-be absence known, and rolling his shoulders back, yawned loudly, jaws stretching like an anxious tiger's. He breathed in the heavy salt air again—the familiarity of it soothing him slightly—and began to walk, limbs loose, the scrape of his sandals seeming to echo across the shoreline. He had a sharp sense of direction, one that he'd honed working with the thieves and living out on the banks with the river gypsies, and his intuition led him up and away from the water, away from the scrappy life that had sustained him for this long. He would come back to it, he supposed, but now he had to settle the strange hunger in his heart, the sustained calling for another road, and—he slowly began to recognize—the sharp longing for those familiar faces.

He heard a high keening whistle, and the annoyed yells of policemen, along with, he realized, the raspy shouts of the innkeeper whose front doors he'd smashed clean through running away with the contents of a fellow customer's purse. He grinned, whistled and ran towards them, blood pumping in excitement, brain blinded in glee. He knew his road now, and was all the more pleased for it. He drew his sword, whip-fast, and waltzed through them, his mind blanked, a dervish amongst the devout. His arms and legs moved lazily, knowingly, as he went, topsy-turvy, his hands as agile as his feet, sometimes quicker, and when he woke from his dream, the innkeeper was out cold, one of the policemen was sliced clean through, and the other had wisely kept back, and was bandaging his comrade.

He rubbed the back of his head, feeling the hard bruise under his hair from where the innkeeper's ring-laden fist had managed to land. The dirt was thick in his hair, and his hands were scuffed and scarred, more akin to his feet. He had done well for himself, he thought approvingly. He cocked his head, summing up the single survivor, and deeming him to be of no threat, left, heading towards the main road. It would be a while before reinforcements were sent. The police out in these parts were mostly volunteer, mostly understaffed, mostly cover for the gangs running illegal drugs down to the port. He smiled, still feeling the rush of his blood pumping madly in his veins, and hoped—with little reason—that he would find them soon.


	2. homebound heart

She yawned as she lowered the bucket slowly into the old stone well. It had been one of those days, where the effort of the day's labor burned into her bones, and she was ready for the day to be done. Before that, though, the tables had to be scrubbed down, the lamps extinguished, the few last souls lingering in the teahouse gently led to the exit. The old cook was in the back, laughing gaily with one of them. She smelt something delicious, wafting through the back door, something fried and spicy. She smiled. She liked the cook, who was a gruff man with pepper-gray hair and twinkling dark brown eyes that seemed to be permanently mischievous. He was friendly to her, in an unassuming way, and after all the things she had seen-all the horror she had suffered, she had come to realize-it was refreshing to know that there were still people in the world who smiled without malice, who talked lightly without a need to deceive.

_Still good people_, she thought, _even in these days of war_. And she thought back, back to them, those two whose memories lay lightly under her skin, finding their chance to break free whenever she thought about how she'd ended up here, in this small town not terribly far from Nagasaki. From Ikitsuki. She had gotten tired of wandering, not long after she'd left them, realizing the road had lost its charm, that it seemed a harder, colder place when she was alone. She'd wanted a place to call home. A place to create some memory of her life, where people would remember her name. She settled on the next town she passed through, not far from the great city.

It had taken some time to find a place to work that wasn't an offense to the senses, and for a while she slept under doorways and in alleyways, sneaking away with the light of day, before the shop owners could throw their washing water at her. She'd managed for a while throwing dice at a gambling house—which she had to admit to herself she enjoyed quite a bit—but the general desperation of her customers, most of whom were burnt-out sailors and traders looking for a quick buck and a quicker sink into an alcohol-fueled stupor, and the usual foul temperament of the yakuza guards had compelled her to try her hand at other skills. The teahouses had been where she'd started out, after leaving her mother and heading to Edo, and so she want back to them. She'd gone from place to place, not knowing what,exactly, she was looking for, but knowing that she would stay when she had found it. She'd come upon this one during an afternoon stroll, when she was trying to ignore the gnawing ache of hunger in her belly. The place was airy, dark stone floors and low wood tables, and the patrons, she noted, were happier than most of her previous customers in the gambling house—arguing over this and that rumor with a warm pot of tea and some snacks to share, sometimes yelling praise at the cook, sometimes singing to those girls they could never quite face directly.

The swirl of life captivated her, and she begged the old cook for a job. At first, she worked in the back, cutting and chopping vegetables and slicing up the fresh fish for the day, tending to the fires and coughing her lungs out over the smoke of the coals. The cook, who was far less chipper with her back then, grinned as she wiped the sweat from her brow and yelled over the the sounds of frying and flames: "I'm gonna abuse you like a workhorse, you hear? Ain't nothing gonna get to you if you don't put your blood into it." At first, his threats terrified her, but she gradually came to realize they were simply his way of saying _care about your work, for no one else here will_. For a while, she'd seen this job—this temporary stop—as a chance to recuperate a bit, before she went on her quest to find a new home.

But she didn't leave, or more accurately, she simply couldn't. Maybe she hadn't realized that sometimes home sneaks up on you-that the memories begin to bind you ever more tightly to the place where you rest your feet, where you eat the salt of your toil. Or maybe she simply hadn't realized just how pleasant the sense of fixity—of knowing that this place was yours in ways no other place could be—was. She lived in a room above the teahouse, sparsely decorated, with a low bed and a coal brazier for heat in the winter time. In time, she thought, it would better reflect her quirks. But for now it was fine as it was-the start of a new life, the final settling into a much-wanted home.

She pulled up the bucket, water sloshing noisily as she steadied her hand, and walked back inside. Most of the patrons had left-one, however, was dozing noisily in the corner. She put down the bucket by the door, snapping her washing rag as she walked breezily up to the patron. The cook grinned toothily as he scraped grease off his pans. Sleepers faced the worst of her fury, and it had been quite a while since someone had been chucked headlong out of the teahouse, sopping moldy rags tossed after their heads.

"Excuse me, sir," she said, in a voice that would be saccharine if not for the tensile strength of each syllable, sharpened headily to a knife's edge.

A drowned moan rumbled out from the prone figure, "Ungahh…." The sleeper shifted his weight slightly, dropping head beneath dark loose sleeves, trying to shut out every speck of light and thought and human interference. The dreams were coming to take him, and he'd be damned if he would be pulled away, so close to the edge.

Fuu straightened, half-glanced at the cook, who was barely suppressing his laughter. She grit her teeth—he was a rather large man, she had to admit—and bellowed, in tones that would call the dead back to life ablaze in righteous fury, "WAKE UP, SIR!" and snapped the damp rag so close to face it nearly caught-mold, ancient dirt and all-in his open jaw. Then, without changing her merciless expression, she leaned down and yanked him forward, allowing his weight and general incompetence to deliver him, bone-crunchingly hard, to the floor. His eyes bulged out has his body roughly dragged his spirit back into awakening, and he stared, terrified, up at the demon he thought had come to claim his due.

Fuu smiled, milky teeth glistening in the light from the wax-paper lanterns, and said, "Your tab, sir." The tone was effervescent, bubbly, seemingly bereft of the deadly force that had haunted it but a minute ago. She bowed low, meeting his startled, half-lidded gaze, and handed him a crisp scrap of parchment. He looked dully at the numbers, and then back at her, with that catlike grin. He thought better of it, and pulling a purse out from the depths of a miraculously uncrumpled sleeve, laid some gold coins on the table, before pulling himself up.

She took a good look at him-he'd have a nasty bruise over on the side of his face that had met the floor, but besides his dazed composure, he would live, and live well, it would seem. She breathed a sigh of relief. There were days she'd had to drag passed-out souls through the back door and pour hot dishwater down their faces to get them to stir. This was mild, all told. "Many thanks!" she exclaimed brightly, pocketing the change before turning away sharply, tying up her loose sleeves, and getting to work wiping down the table.

The man seemed to hesitate, almost as if he wanted to ask her something, before shaking his head and turning away, shuffling towards the exit. "Fuu," he called out as he lifted the curtain, "good night, dear." He left before she could respond, and had he waited, he would have seen what he waited for, perhaps-that quiet smile that only genuine contentment could bring. It lay on her features for a moment before slipping away, and before her thoughts turned, as they always did, to that one road lined with sunflowers, to the man who had haunted her, and the men who would not abandon her.

She moved quickly, arms working in circular motion along the tabletops. I wonder, she thought, if they're at peace. If they had stopped running. For surely, there was no greater reward for an eternal wanderer than to find the one place from which he is not forced to flee.

She remembered Shino's silhouette in the rain, remembered her own desperation as she ran through the streets, looking for Jin, hoping he was not yet lost, praying he was not yet dead. And her relief, her expansive relief, to see them at the riverbank. Her relief, she remembered, seemed to pale in comparison to Mugen's, who said nothing of import (as was his way) but was all sword and flight and relieved fury.

_Shino_, she thought hazily, _you damned well better be there for him._

She thought of him, the lean Ryukyu man, yawning as she started to extinguish the table lamps, one by lonely one. She hoped, somewhat contrarily, that he was still fleeing from the things that he despised (which seemed to be a good chunk of the world and its inhabitants), that he still had that half-crazed grin and that wild lust for blood. She could not imagine him tied down, to any place, to any land. Some things could never be caged. And yet, and yet, he had come back, through terror and blood, through sea and sand, when she had needed him. When she had simply wanted him to live, because she had nothing else left in the world.

She did not know how to repay that debt just yet. How does one say thank you, for coming back from the brink of the netherworld? For refusing to leave this life for what—surely for him—was a more peaceable existence? She straightened up, scanning the darkened teahouse for any orphaned streaks of dirt or stain, and finding none, closed the front door, setting the heavy iron bar into place, and headed to the back stairs, up to her tiny room, where she would watch the stars, and send to her wanderers all the luck she could gather.

She heard a few rattles as the cook set the last of his pans in their shelves, and then nothing, but the cool stillness of the wind, the blank light of the waning moon.


	3. days of longing

He swings the blade down, the motion smooth and unruffled, the only noise the slight whick of the steel slicing through the stilled air. Up, and down, arms straight as iron rods, only bending for the strike, and up, and down. He counts, rhythmically, methodically. He likes the precision of each movement, the fact that he will *know*—innately, inherently—how each muscle of his tenses, how each joint slides back into place. There is a certainty in practicing his forms, with this sword he has not let go of since those days—those days when everything was confusing and hurried and blood was on his hands and suicide in his brain— that he still keeps with him, even though he's now earned enough to buy a fine new blade, just as the swordsmith tells him, every time he goes in to look at his newly tempered creations. He doesn't want to forget, he doesn't know if he can really forgive himself.

His eyes are closed, but he can see it now, the small temple across the way, across the river, the darkness of those clouds and the heaviness of that night. He has not seen her since then, has not heard from her, or of her in what gossip he discerns from the townsfolk (which, he muses somewhat sadly as he swings his sword in a sharp and perfect curve, he cannot discern quite so clearly now, not without Fuu to decipher it for him.) The husband—that lousy, drink-addled serpent—has died, his liver finally giving out before his befouled brain did. She has not returned to this side of the river though—to this side where civilization might receive her again. Maybe she does not want to. Maybe she fears Kohza will be all that remains, that no one will remember pleasant Shino, lovely, *respectable* Shino. He had thought her uncommonly beautiful then, watching her brush her long hair in the dim moonlight—time bought with thievery and his two only friends—and wishing for her happiness so hard he could feel the rock settle in his gut, the tension knotting up his spine, even as he lay there, quietly.

It has been two years. And he has not seen her, not even felt her, in those dreams he has sometimes, where he sees his wild friend, storm-eyed and fierce, drenched in blood, a sword clenched in his yellowed teeth, his mouth stretched out in a fearsome grin. Or her, sitting by the shore, lonely and hopeful and uncertain all at once, and the faint smell—of sunflowers, he thinks—in the breeze that lifts her hair, ever so slightly. He went back, to this no-name town with the too shallow river, so that he might move on, so that he might begin to make the life that they all dreamed of having. One that was settled, one that would not be snatched away by fire or unjust authority.

He cannot imagine leaving her, nor could he imagine her loving her any less when she finds him, when she decides her exile is not worth keeping. He has never felt such certainty before, it grounds him to this place, serving a lord who he despises. He would be moody, he would've—back in those days before he had friends to remember, friends to send well wishes through in dream and in mind—been disgusted with the cheapness of his task. Though, he counters to himself, as he shifts his stance, moving his weight to his left leg, swinging harder, though no louder, with his roughened exhalation, you are a murderer. And will always be one. There will be no peace for you yet. He almost breaks rhythm, remembering the way the moonlight spilled through the ripped paper doors—the blood, merciful one, the blood and there was so much—but he stays firm, forcing out each strike, forcing his muscles to move in perfect rhythm.

He will go to the river today, he decides, and he will wait. One of the boatmen—a friendly sort, with dark skin like Mugen's, and strange brown eyes that no person of this country would have—has kept watch for him, though he smiles every time he comes near, and Jin can feel the heat rise to his face every time he asks about her, even though the boatman never pries, and only speaks when Jin asks him the inevitable question. He asks Jin to tell him stories to while away the time they spend watching the temple across the wide slow river, but Jin has never been a skilled storyteller, and doesn't know, really, how to put into words the way he wandered with those two—how, in the end, he only ever wanted to protect them both.

The boatman shakes his head, a strange and light bob from side to side, halfway between acceptance and rejection, and then proceeds to sing, in some strange and lilting language that surely comes from lands so very far away, lands that Jin cannot envision, not in his mind's eye, not yet, when all that haunts him is a temple across the way, and a house on the lonely cliff upon a beach.

_Dil e dardmand e aashiq huwa hijr maen hay khooni, kabhee baat us ki mano, karo ahd e wasl yara._

He stops his practice at long last, the sweat running down his lean face, cutting tracks through the dust that has plastered onto his skin. He could not understand what the boatman said then, only felt the keen longing in his voice, and wished he could give voice to his thoughts like that. The boatman dipped his head and smiled at him after he'd hummed that line, as if it were meant for Jin, as if it had some kernel of truth buried within for him. Jin did not feel annoyed, either by his own ignorance or the man's seeming refusal to learn proper Japanese— his dialect was worse than Mugen's, his accent south of the Dutchman's—but instead felt comforted by his presence, a stranger who had no qualms in looking after him.

Perhaps, despite himself, he was beginning to make a friend, though one, he thought smiling to himself, who had yet to give him a proper name. He hoped—quietly, the hope of one who has seen too much in the world and known very well how fragile promises are—that he would see her today, so that he could tell her these stories, of new friends and old. He wished to see her again so that he could reassure her that she was worth waiting for, that Shino was remembered, even if the townsfolk let their minds drift away.

He pulled aside the door to his tiny one-room house, and surveyed the interior. A low bed, the sheets pulled straight over the straw mattress, a burnt-black kettle that he had received from a European down at the port after he half-heartedly rescued him from some low-level yakuza shakedown artists. It did a rather good job heating water, he mused, though its whistle sometimes scared the birds in the pines outside, and they would chatter and squawk in harried indignation. The fire pit needed a good scrub—he had been traveling in his lord's retinue the last few days, and could hardly be bothered to clean when he did manage to make it back to his own lodgings— and the wooden chest of drawers in the corner, carved roughly out of bare pine, held what few things he called his own. He went inside, still breathing deeply, and slid the door shut behind him.

He ran his fingers over the rough wood of the dresser. It wasn't elegant, he fretted, it was the rough work of an even rougher itinerant carpenter. Nothing like he imagined the furniture that Shino once owned to have been like. He had probably been cheated—he'd never known how to spend his money anyways. But there was something there, in that roughly hewn wood, so bare and unforgiving he was sure his fingers would be covered in splinters if he so much as lifted them, there was something there that was oddly comforting. So rough, and yet, so true. It would never try to be an artwork, some gilded lily for a king. A plain chest of drawers, with a purpose as clear as summer rain.

He could hear Mugen's gravelly laughter now, if he stayed still, and fixed his eyes on the cracks in the wood, the unsanded edges so dangerous and sturdy. Could hear him mocking his seemingly futile wait, could hear the lazy lust that undercut every word he said to any woman he could not respect. Could hear the sharpened tone of respect cutting at his slang, each and every time he'd dodged his graceless blows. He lightly lifted his fingers—sans splinters, as always—and stared out the window at the green pines.

It was time to go to the river bank. He'd had enough, he thought, of remembering his days with them. For surely they had parted for a reason, surely they were now going to seek out the rest of their lives on their own terms. And across the river, in that temple at once so close and so very impenetrable, was a reason to carry on, to endure in this land.

_But then again_, he thought, as he pulled open the drawer and looked at the old hakama lying there, neatly folded, its frayed edges and faded color betraying his once-hard traveled life, _could we also not find our way back to each other?_ He let his fingers brush against the worn cloth, once, as if for good luck from his friends so far away, and went out of the back door, down towards the riverbank, and his friendly, nonsensical companion.


	4. stars and shadow

_I must_, he thought dreamily, _be waiting to die_. The blade passed, tantalizingly close, to the sunburnt skin on the back of his neck, roughened up from years and years of sleeping in the brush, on the ground, wherever he could collapse without the risk of being found before the sunrise. And with the blade, the shadow of a wing, the rush of wind from the mirror-world, salty and wet in his hair. He moved, as always, inelegantly and with damning precision, down to his hands that were his feet, down and over, and his feet met the policeman's face, strong as a soldier's fist, and he felt the satisfying crunch of teeth and bone against his heel.

Still dreamy, still smelling that faint salt-ridden breeze, he rolled over, crouching on his heels, knees to chin, and rocked, once, twice. His breath came hard now through his bared teeth, and he strained against the urge to just be done with it and fall back asleep right there, right next to a presumably dead man. He had stripped corpses once, when he was young, back on the islands, cleaning them before they were burnt, unceremoniously, efficiently, by the lone undertaker left to the islands by the Satsuma authorities. He had slept among the dead once, when he was so very tired, just like now.

He was not sure he wanted to be doing that again.

Slowly, slowly, he forced open one gray eye, and then the other. He could, now that his senses were starting to return to this world, far from the mirror and the crows, hear the steady rush of the stream drumming in his ears. The policeman was, he hoped balefully, still alive. He didn't feel like throwing a body into the river, hearing of its swollen and putrid emergence a few days down the road. He turned to look, his eyes starting to adjust to the pale moonlight again.

A steady, if hesitant, rise and fall of the chest, though his jaw was impressively nonfunctional, his face a perplexing shade of purplish-black. Mugen smiled to himself. _I must be growing soft. _And almost immediately, _naw, just smarter. _After traveling with those two morons, one couldn't help but grow somewhat more concerned with the ways of the world outside, and the well-being of its inhabitants. It wouldn't do to leave a trail of the dead behind him, at any rate. This would do just fine. The lawmen would leave him alone, if he didn't do much to them. And that, he surmised, meant not killing them when he lost himself to the blindness of battle.

Kariya had said it, hadn't he. No control, so wild and open, _I can read you like an open book_. Bastard must've meant something to it.

He rose to his feet, in one swift motion, feeling the lightness as the blood rushed away from his head. He exhaled once, letting his chest collapse, pushing the breath out of his lean frame, wanting to sleep, wanting to hear their voices again, if he couldn't see them now. He waded into the stream, feeling the light tickle of minnows biting his ankles, and splashed the cold water over himself, pulling his shirt up over his head. What sleep he wanted, what sleep he so desired, would have to wait.

He didn't want to sleep smelling like blood, smelling like the memories he wished he didn't have. Methodically, he wrung the shirt through the current, watching the burnt-red stream of spilt blood flow over his feet, mixing with the water. Some of it, he knew, feeling the sting of the water on his cuts, was his-most of it was the poor fool's who was now groaning, life still throbbing away within him. He snapped the shirt once, letting the spray fall on his face. Suddenly careless, he flung it to the riverbank, thinking to hang it out later. He breathed softly, letting his skin prickle in the chill breeze, and rubbed a hand against rough stubble, cracking his neck, stretching this way and that, so much a lissome predator.

Three days since he'd set off, one more altercation in a bar later he had resorted to the back roads, far enough that he wouldn't be looked for, close enough that some would still try. He stood idly in the current, the water rhythmic against the back of his bare legs, suddenly unsure. Where was he heading? To Ikitsuki, surely, to see what was left of his memories and theirs. The why, that was the question. To say that he still saw the crows, to say that he still heard a song in his sleep, a song that once bound him and a man from so far away, seemed too inelegant an answer.

In other words, bullshit.

So then, the why remained. But he had never needed a reason to wander away and alone, to run ferociously where others tremulously stepped. He loved this, the uncertainty of it, the exhilaration. Maybe not the stealing food, the sometimes-counting of all his possessions, and even sometimes, the _need_, instead of the _want_, to steal from and lay waste to everything that came chasing his way. But this, a cloudy sky, a swift stream running at his feet, his foes vanquished (or at least, rendered harmless), this was what he loved. A landscape with no memory buried beneath its surface.

He waded back to the bank, wrung his shirt out one last time, squeezing hard, watching the water drip into the mud. He snapped it again, enjoying the tense sound, and threw it up over an overhanging branch, hearing a harried squawk and the faint rustle of disturbed leaves. He dropped himself under the shadow of the tree, suddenly all a bag of bones. His sword was still there, from where he'd flung it aside in the rush to pulverize his attacker's face. It was sharp enough to do its job, he figured. Didn't need that much more care. He could hear Jin's violent disagreement already.

He stared up at the sky, again, his consciousness firmly in the waking world. Sometimes he remembered her, mostly in anger that now lay dormant, spent coals. Mostly he remembered what he had _said _to her, of faraway stars, of lives so small they were almost meaningless, against that great inky expanse of the night sky. He hoped she was dead. He wished she'd learned her lesson. Knew that she wouldn't have.

Thought no more of her, the greatest and most jarring insult, given her piteous need.

Small lives, he'd told her, and she'd despaired and never turned back. And yet somewhere were two small lives, tiny flames buffeted by much violence and more sadness, that mattered so much to him. His confusion at his own actions rose up, but he tamped it down, _forced_ it down. Here he was, doing what he liked. And wasn't that enough? He shut his eyes, let out a tired string of swears, rhyming nonsense he'd learned out at sea, and descended headlong into the dreamworld.

When he woke, the light had just started to crawl over the tips of the pines, and the ghostly mist hadn't yet dispersed, burned away by the brightness of day. It hung, threadlike, across the branches and the leaves, draping the woods in an eerie coat of silvery gray, the cloak of the dead. He sneezed, wondered briefly if washing his shirt had been a terrible mistake, and just as easily shrugged it off. He hated the smell of blood sometimes.

He half-opened his eyes, hoping he'd fall again just as easily into sleep, knowing just as well that he wouldn't. And then, reluctantly, turned his head imperceptibly to look at where the wounded man had lain. The undergrowth was flattened and stained dark where he'd been, and the smell of blood and injury still hung lightly in the misty air, but he had managed to crawl off. Back towards the town, and judging by the width of the trail, someone had been kind enough to help him.

He was glad they hadn't killed him in his sleep, though he supposed even policemen had their more honorable moments in life. Surprises, it seemed, never ceased to be. He yawned, staring up at the light starting to filter through the pines, more exhausted now than he had been after the fight. Silence didn't do well by him.

Silence.

The woods are never silent, he thinks. Even without the pair of them chattering away beside him. And then, he _knows. _

He snaps forward suddenly, with spring and speed, his arm reaching out for his sword as he felt the sting of a sharp edge hitting his skin. Falls gracelessly forward, hearing the low thunk of knives hitting wood. They sound small. Which, doubtlessly means, there will be many more to come.

His knees are already curled, and he lunges away from the tree, up and high, catching a glimpse of his black-clad attacker. Leaps away with his unsheathed sword in his left hand, his arms loose at his sides, and lands on his feet, tense, his toes lightly bouncing against the earth, his teeth bared in a growl.

"The hell are you?"

No answer, which infuriates him, and already he can feel the blindness settling in, the indifference to everything that surrounds him. His attacker is small, lithe, quick, and before he can comprehend his position, the stranger leaps forward with a short sword, which Mugen dodges, throwing his own sword-arm back, letting the attacker's movement carry him past his target, and he stumbles then, unused to this improvisatory quickness.

Mugen uses his own unwieldy momentum to flip himself over, farther away from the masked stranger. He needs to see before he can strike, needs to sense everything in the ground and the air and the stranger in front of him.

Of course, he isn't given the time.

But now he is awake. And now he is more than a bit annoyed. The stranger leaps, Mugen swerves downward, curling his sword-arm inward. A barrage of throwing knives plunge downwards, but already it is too late-Mugen rolls forward to a knee, a child's movement that dodges the knives, and then lashes outward and back with his sword, slashing across his attacker's torso. The wound will not be fatal, he knows—he's struck to get away this time, not to kill.

Next time, he knows, he will kill.

The attacker stumbles, Mugen is immediately on his feet, swings his sword to his throat as he turns to face him.

Or..her, it would seem.

"Good as I remember you," she says, straining to laugh. A light wave, and two others drop from the trees. Mugen would've had a real fight on his hands this time. He licks his lips at the thought of it, his blood still running hot.

"The hell are you?" he repeats, his voice savage.

She unwraps the mask from her face, and he sizes her up. Good looking features-seemingly sculpted face, dark eyes, the light skin of a wealthy scion. Clearly had other amusements than arranging flowers, though. He's far from forgiving, though, but he's willing to be curious.

"The hell you want, then."

"An assassination. A useful murder. Some fun. Call it what you want." He scowls.

"Y'all's squad there not cut for it?"

It's her turn to scowl now. "Yatsuha," she says abruptly. "Perhaps they are, but your skill is unquestionable."

An appeal to his vanity, from a lovely lady. It wouldn't be the first time, he thinks, remembering Fuu's incoherent anger.

He leers at her, hungry for something. "What do I get?"

She, not unappreciative of his unsteady gaze, throws a pouch at him, which he easily catches, without taking his eyes off her.

He briefly breaks his stare, feeling the pouch's not-insignificant weight. He fumbles with the strings briefly, reaches in and pulls out a gold coin. Runs his fingers over its smoothness, tests it with his teeth. It's soft-high grade material right here.

He breathes in, once, and only once, before grinning wickedly, flinging the pouch and its contents up in the air.

"Can't buy me, not that cheap." He yawns, suddenly bored, as the pouch's contents fall to earth. He reaches for his shirt from the branch, catches her wrist, and twists it, carefully, so he doesn't break it. She still drops the knife, even though he figures she must've been through this rigmarole so many times before. Too skilled not to have seen that one coming.

And so, he is doubly suspicious.

"What do you _want?"_ he asks tiredly, pulling his shirt off the branch and over his head, running a hand through his scruffy hair to brush the dirt and leaves off. He's restless now, he realizes. He doesn't want to be here, having this conversation, knowing that he'll be bound somehow to his words.

"You need work, and I need a worker." she says flatly. "I've seen you work. As a bodyguard, not too long ago."

Mugen moves swiftly, so swiftly her two companions are dumbfounded when they see him holding her up, by the scruff of her neck, inches above the ground. It's cartoonishly impossible, but his anger is very, terrifyingly real.

"If you do anything, _anything_, to them, I'll find you in hell and tear you to pieces." His rage surprises him, the fact that he has moved without thinking shocks him. So deep in his bones, it seems, runs the bond between the three of them. He lets none of it show in his face. Just arrogance. And the white-hot rage that forced his feet.

"Let me down," she says calmly. He's suddenly embarrassed now, wonders if he's exposed them to even more danger, curses the attachment that separation breeds. He backs away from her, unsure. Murdering these three isn't beyond him, and his body tenses, ready to strike if he wills it.

"This may be useful for you. The government has been stepping up this…purification campaign of theirs in recent months. Something about building national character, pride in blood and lord," she says flatly, matter-of-fact all of a sudden, though her gaze still lingers on him with some interest. He's pleased for that, at least.

Purification. The word disgusts him, and how could it not, spawn of a penal colony, child of Ryukyu, never at home anywhere. He's suddenly aware of how dark his skin seems against hers, of his lean frame and unruly hair.

Of his difference.

"The official is in Nagasaki. His charge is for religious cults, underground groups. He's already gone after the shrines of Guanyin and the protective deities at the port, you know, the ones that serve the trading crews? Smashed the idols, burnt the buildings down."

Mugen sets his teeth, suddenly realizing her hook to lure him in. The one she had all along, waiting up those dark sleeves. "Shut up," he snarls abruptly, knowing his fate, hating it all the while.

"What will you do?" Yatsuha minces no words, though she looks as if she might touch him, she looks as if she wants to see he's okay. It makes him, against reason, all the more annoyed.

"_I_," he says, emphasizing the syllable, "will meet you in Nagasaki. _You_ can go ahead and leave me alone."

A ghost of a smile flickers over Yatsuha's face, he thinks, but she's ever the professional, waving her two companions back into the rapidly receding shadows. "A fair request. I'll do my best to honor it." She turns to leave, and he can't help but admire the lean firmness of her frame, the dark hair held tightly in place with long pins. He wonders if she'll keep her word.

Wonders, briefly, if it would matter even she didn't.


End file.
